


Intimacies

by salamanderinspace



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Drabble, M/M, POV First Person, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 18:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3739816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamanderinspace/pseuds/salamanderinspace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very quick prompt fill: "Chicanery/Balem and domestic routine"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intimacies

I grew accustomed to it.

The sight of a copper sheave in his tapered fingers, illegible across the expanse of the boardroom. The smell of brine in his damp hair, which meant that a bottom-lit pool, tiled in mosaic, would be moist with droplets that day (because he had to look his finest to return to the Stockworks.) Sometimes the smell meant that his Cruiser was freshly-docked from distant worlds laid barren, emptied of population, because the only way he maintained the perpetual youth of a God was by destroying like One. We all knew and accepted that. The sight of his hulking, snake-skinned guards, always towering above me. His crossed legs; his thonged sandals and manicured toenails. His robotic secretary. How his purposeful presence and composure filled a room with expectant silence. He sneezed once; only once, ever, and even the sims flinched in shock. His bronze gorget, the one bright thing catching the last light off an array of rainbow-colored moons. His dark capes, robes, cassocks--always different, endless, perfectly tailored, glittering and imperial. The soft, fluttering tone that the scanner made after testing his meals for poison (and finding none; we wouldn't dare, would we?) The look of his steepled hands, always heavy with rings and ornament. The taste of the wine he sometimes shared, if I was willing to perform whatever sequence of behaviors he found most worthy of reward. The smell of that same wine, subtle and dry, on his breath.

I grew accustomed to him. I know he must have his own history of me; everything from the precise click of my steps on the glassy floor to the vinegar scent of my shaving soap. I always shaved while the Cruiser was docking--and only then. I find I prefer my face with whiskers; he always preferred me without. He's made his preferences known. I grew accustomed to that.

After almost two centuries, we knew each other. Not perfectly. After all, he was away more often than not. He'd been absent for entire Solar years, on business, checking-in only via holo-presence. How could he know what I'd been up to, while he was away? And how could I know everything that had happened to him?


End file.
